A couple weeks back our youngest daughter Georgia had her 21st birthday and as part of her celebrations, she decided she wanted to go camping with our normal camping crew, down at Dryandra.
Luckily for us, Dryandra is one of our favourite locations so we pulled the van out, for the first time since our Augusta trip at Christmas, and headed the 160’odd kms South East. Jules, George and I, along with Rod and BJ arrived Thursday afternoon, with Mads, Paul and Tania getting in late Friday.
Friday saw us taking things easy, spending a couple hours cruising around the park looking for Numbats and other wildlife. However, apart from a couple of Kangaroos we didn’t see too much. En route, Rod and I deployed our motion sensing camera traps out in the bush in the hope of capturing some David Attenborough worthy wildlife shots that evening.
Friday night got a bit loud, with plenty of cocktails shaken and devoured, lots of laughter and a roaring campfire. Camping should always be about great locations with great friends.
Saturday morning started a bit slower than usual, but after a hearty feed of bacon and eggs, P&T went for an exploratory walk (as this was their first trip to Dryandra), whilst the rest of us went to check our camera traps and do some Numbat spotting.
Rod’s camera trap was molested by some animal during the night, with it getting too close to the lens for it to focus. Whereas my camera picked up three different animals that night, with a pair of Rufous Treecreepers making their distaste at the camera well known. We’ve moved our camera traps for Saturday night, but following is what my trap captured on Friday.
On our drive back to camp, sharp eyed Georgia then spotted our quarry, a fleet of foot Numbat who only paused long enough for a couple of pics before disappearing into the bush. And then, just down the track a bit I spotted a large Echidna foraging around a tree.
To top off our afternoon, as we were chilling back at our campsite, Putter noticed a chook looking bird wandering around which turned out to be one of the Mallee Fowl that was released by Rangers into the park back in 2019, in the hope of re-establishing a local wild population. The Ranger happened to be dropping off some wood when the Mallee Fowl wandered by, and she said that before the release of the four additional birds in 2019, they’d only ever spotted two Mallee Fowl in the park, and since the release they’d only ever spotted one of the released birds – so we were all pretty chuffed – whereas the Mallee Fowl didn’t give two shits about us, wandering around the camp like he/she owned the place.
Unfortunately, the forecast rain front arrived at about 5pm so we stoked up the fire and retreated to our respective vans for a couple of hours. We did manage to get an hour back out by the campfire for toasted marshmallows, before the rain returned for the evening.
Sunday morning started foggy but dry, and we soon got the campfire roaring again as we had our breakfast and coffee. Before packing up to leave, Rod and I went back out to check our camera traps. Again, Rod missed out with his trap, but he’s left his out there (at a secret location) and he’ll pick it up again in a couple of weeks. Unbeknownst to me, I’d set my camera trap up on the entrance to an Echidna’s house (log) and he came and went throughout Saturday and then spent Saturday night watching the rain from his hidey hole in the log.
As always, Dryandra never fails to surprise, delight and relax! We love this place and look forward to visiting again soon.